Switching accounts is a currently accepted and performed practice by many individual customers and small businesses. For example, a customer may decide for various reasons that he or she wants to switch his or her current credit card to a new credit card offered by a particular card issuer. However, the customer may have to wait a considerable length of time for the card issuer to process the application and then for the new card to arrive in the mail before being able to take full advantage of the purchasing power of the new account. Also, the customer may have to take steps to change any recurring charges, direct billing, or automatic payments to and from the customer's old card to the customer's new card, which may be very time-consuming and cumbersome for the customer and may trigger various hidden costs. It may also be difficult for the customer to remember all of the entities that have the customer's old card on file, such as, for example, commercial web sites and retail store accounts. If the customer forgets a particular entity and a charge is made by that entity on the customer's old card, the customer may be billed a fee or suffer other adverse actions.
These and other drawbacks exist with current systems.